


Princess

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Modern Era, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Touch-Starved, and some good old fashioned feuding, the nickname "Princess" used so many times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: A Bellarke stripper/mobster AU to the tune of Dance Monkey.He comes to the club to watch her dance every Friday, when she’s the star of the act. Princess. But little does Clarke know that he’s the head of the Blake crime family, feuding with her own family, the Wallaces.*He comes to watch her dance every Friday.They play her music, and dim the lights. A wisp of smoke curls in the air, and then she steps on the stage. The bar is all velvet and fantasies, and she melts into the scene with want already pooling in her belly.And he’s always there.He never speaks. Never moves.But as soon as she steps on the stage, he sets his drink down and shifts to get a better view.She’s the only one he watches dance, and because he does it with reverence, she dances for him.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 155
Kudos: 501





	1. Dance for me

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I want to thank everyone who squealed with me about this fic when [I first proposed it on Tumblr.](https://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com/post/624190269365092352) And thank you for all the kind, encouraging anons that made me finish this baby!
> 
> Inspired, of course, by Dance Monkey, and July heat.
> 
> Have fun!
> 
> P.S. If you're wondering whether this WIP is going to leave you high and dry, don't. It's all done; it's just too long to post in one chapter. 
> 
> P.P.S. Chapter 2 is where the smut happens. ;)

He comes to watch her dance every Friday.

They play her music, and dim the lights. A wisp of smoke curls in the air, and then she steps on the stage. The bar is all velvet and fantasies, and she melts into the scene with want already pooling in her belly.

Suddenly, her legs lose their fragility. Her insecurity melts away.

Clarke’s body takes over.

In this light, her hips know how to sway right. Her shoulders drop to the right tempo. When she hooks her knee around the pole, she’s not afraid of being weightless.

And _he’s_ always there.

She spies the crowd, past the men in the front row, leering at her in their sweat-soaked shirts, only to find him in the last booth to the right.

He never speaks. Never moves.

But as soon as she steps on the stage (and Clarke knows this, she’s peeked behind the curtains when others took the stage), he sets aside his drink and shifts to get a better view.

She’s the only one he watches dance, and because he does it with reverence, she dances for _him_.

It’s only when half of the bar is already too drunk to stay upright that he switches his table.

Sometimes, he even smiles, an intimacy there, as if saying: _“Hey, friend. Long time, no see.”_

But she’s not his friend and so she pauses with her fingers at the bra hook on her back. It’s a game; she already knows what he’s going to say.

“Again.”

So she takes her clothes off for him again.

Hooks her leg around the pole again.

Dances like there is not an ounce of shame in her.

Again.

“Dance for _me_ ,” he says, in a voice cut from marble and stone.

There’s something between them in that club, all but empty. A shot of electricity as she always finds how handsome he is, every time like the first time. His pristine white shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, a whisper of a tattoo.

But it’s hard for Clarke to see anyone else when it’s just him there, in the front row, looking at her like he’d devour her, and her body ready for him to do just that.

So she dances for him.

When he beckons her over with a lazy hand and dark eyes, she drops to his lap. Close enough to touch, she spots a scar on his upper lip.

“What’s - “ she tries, touching him carefully, brushing her thumb against his lip. He closes his eyes for a second, a wince there that goes deeper than physical, and he grabs her wrist.

“Not there,” he whispers, his voice coated in honey. “Anywhere else. _Please._ ”

It comes out as a choked breath, and Clarke’s almost ashamed to be sitting on his thigh, right there where he can see just how wet he’s made her.

Others shy away.

Others ask her not to touch them.

But when she grips his thigh, he leans back, the muscle in his jaw unclenching. _He_ looks like he’s finally at rest.

“I’ve never seen anybody do the things you do before.”

She wants to say: _and I’ve never seen anyone look at me the way you do before_ , but that is something Clarke would say.

In this club, she is _Princess_ , and so she just smiles at him over her shoulder. Grinds into his hips.

Lets him take her by the waist, and moans when he pulls her closer.

She closes her eyes and forgets about the dollar bills stacked on the table. All she can feel is _him_ , and the layers separating her from where she really wants to be:

On top of him. Their bodies together. No witnesses.

*

Early Friday morning, Clarke removes the last glitter-red traces of Princess off of her body, and drags her weary bones back home.

She opens the door to her apartment, the sole light bulb in the hallway flickering in and out of existence.

Everything in this whole city is worn out, a shadow of what it used to be.

“Hey, baby,” she greets her cat at the door, drops the keys into the bowl with a jingle, and turns on the news.

Arkadia used to be something bigger, back in the day.

It used to be bright, with culture and laughter and peace. Now, she turns on the TV and she’s faced with murder, another mob showdown two blocks away.

_“Two dead, ten injured. Authorities are suspecting that the Blake clan is feuding with the Wallaces over Mount Weather territory. Stay tuned as we learn - “_

She mutes the TV, falls numbly to her couch with a cup of coffee in her hands. For the longest time, she watches the shifting images with no sound. One tragedy. Two tragedies. Three tragedies, and cut.

_Weather._

Her cat begs to be fed, and so she throws some food into the little bowl, lets Aria curl around her legs as they watch the sun rise. There’s still a speck of red on her cheek, Clarke realizes. She can never get the glitter out of her hair.

And she can never get hiseyes out of her mind.

*

“How was work, honey?”

Abby Griffin is sitting across the table from her, flicking the ash off her cigarette right onto the floor. Her nails are perfect as ever, precisely manicured in neutral shades, and the gray pantsuit accentuates her curves, a sign she’s been eating well.

Clarke’s mother, like all the Griffin-Wallaces are expected to be, is absolutely perfect.

So Clarke smiles and takes a sip of her mocha.

“Great. I love it.”

Abby frowns. “Do you need money? If you need money, you know you can always come to me.”

Clarke remembers the stacks at the bottom of her closet. She’s counted them all. He left two thousand last night, just for her. For some reason, he waits until everyone else is gone to take his seat in the first row.

Sometimes, she thinks he doesn’t even want to see her dance. It feels like he just wants her to drape herself over him and stay there for hours.

Men have strange needs. But the desire to be touched, to be engulfed, is the one she can understand down to her bones.

“I’m good.” When Abby shoots her a pointed look, Clarke smiles. “Really, mom. Totally fine.”

If her mom didn’t come from a family of mobsters - oh no, excuse her, _entrepreneurs with absolutely transparent finances and an immense cash flow that just so happens to come through a conglomerate of law firms_ \- Abby wouldn’t have been so light on Clarke being a stripper.

But since their family is peculiar, Clarke thinks her mother is just happy that her daughter doesn’t share the family’s proclivity to shady arms trades.

“How have you been?” Clarke counters, crossing her legs underneath the marble table. She’s strayed so far away from all these nice restaurants, and yet, they’re like a second nature to her. She always knows which fork to use first. “I saw something on the news yesterday.”

Her mother shrugs it off. “Don’t worry about it. You know how the Blakes are. So... _temperamental_.”

Her lips curl downward at the last word, and Clarke chuckles.

She doesn’t know much about the Blakes, but she knows that at least they are not ashamed of what they are. The Wallaces, her mother’s side of the family, always were.

It wasn’t arms trade - it was import-export.

It wasn’t sex work - it was “providing comfortable companionship to wealthy business people who don’t have time for dating.”

And those certainly weren’t turf wars. They were simply miscommunications about strategic deals.

“Sure, mom,” Clarke finally settles on that and smiles. Her mocha’s getting cold. They’ve caught up enough already. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”

Abby smiles and pecks Clarke’s cheek as they get up.

“Stay safe, honey. Okay?”

“You know I never go looking for trouble.”

Her mother flashes her a sad little smile. “But it usually finds you.”

*

The other part of Clarke’s life is composed of Niylah and Nyko, the twins who run the art gallery downtown.

During the past three years, they’ve been immense help to her. It’s what the stripping was for, after all. She wanted to put herself through art school, despite the wishes of her family.

It was a point of pride on good days.

On bad days, it was something that had her crying by the bathtub and wondering if she’d made the wrong choice.

“Is everything ready?” she calls out from the door, recklessly dropping her bag on the floor, but manipulating her canvas with more care.

 _Always your paintings,_ Lexa had told her once. _Always your paintings, and never your people._

But it wasn’t like Clarke could help herself.

She never liked showing her true nature to people. Paintings, on the other hand, worked better. They had so many hiding places, and secrets she could smile at, knowing she was the only one who could crack the code of herself.

“I don’t know,” Nyko starts from the door to the storage, leaning out as a mess of tiny braids covered in red and blue paint. “Is the last painting ready?”

Clarke feels a grin so strong that it threatens to split her face in two.

In just a few hours, everything is ready for her very first post-graduation exhibit. Her feet still ache from the heels yesterday, her muscles are still taut from holding herself back. It would’ve been so easy to cross the line and kiss him.

But now she’s here, and when Nyko asks her what she thinks, Clarke turns around the room, only to find herself facing... herself.

Everywhere she looks.

Her paintings are a mix of neon - red and pink and eerie green, all black backgrounds everywhere. They tell stories if you know where to look, but most people don’t.

There are still some secrets Clarke loves to keep.

“It looks phenomenal.”

*

That night, people pour in through the gallery’s doors, and Clarke savors their reactions.

Some pass by her work, only to linger at the paintings in the back. Others let their eyes widen as soon as they walk in, and Clarke watches their mouths part to form a small, delighted ‘o.’

_Do they know that the field of asphodels is a memory of her family?_

_Do they know the lights show the only place she’s ever felt comfortable with who she was, the sins and the graces?_

The night goes on, and she’s pulled away to one side, and then the other.

Other art gallery curators come to talk to her, introduce her to their best customers. Some directly ask about the price of her paintings - even those she doesn’t really want to part with.

The night is splendid and so, by the time her hair has escaped her ponytail and the cuffs of her shirt have reached her elbows, Clarke feels delighted, exalted, absolutely on top of the fucking _world_.

All her life, she’d felt like a monkey dancing from one side to another for her family, for her mother, for anyone who dared to come with a demand.

And now, she’s here. Standing in the center of the gallery, with hundreds of people who’ve come to see _her_ work.

Something is missing, but it always is. The hole cut out by her heart is always there, a good companion to her for all these years. Tonight, she can set it aside as she watches Nyko and Niylah approach her with smiles painting their faces softer.

“That’s another one done,” Nyko tells her, beaming with pride.

“Wait, _another?_ ” Clarke asks, nearly choking on her champagne. “What do you mean, another?”

Nyko just shoots her a shit-eating grin. “You sold 7 paintings tonight. Three of them went to a single buyer.”

“Should I _thank_ them?” she asks, frowning a little.

Nyko shakes his head. “The big spender wanted _Asphodel Fields,_ _The Lights_ , and _The Gratitude Practice For Not Breaking Your Bones More than Twice_.” Nyko’s grin widens. “I’m sorry, I know you love those. But the price was right.”

And tens of thousands of dollars _was_ the right price.

The right price to keep her from dancing, if she so chose. The right price to tell her mother, _No, I don’t need the Wallaces. I can do it on my own, however I’d like._

“Thank you. Who are they?”

Nyko looks around the room, then shrugs. “I think he’s gone. His check is still here, though.”

Later, Clarke stumbles out onto the street, dizzy with excitement and vibrating with the atmosphere. It was the first time she’d saw appreciation for her work, and it felt good.

It felt so damn, delight-down-to-her-toes _good_.

But now she’s digging through her bag and she can’t find a lighter, the cigarette already hanging off her lips. For a second, she finds herself looking from the outside in: a successful artist, stumbling out of her own exhibit, looking for a lighter and leaving red lipstick marks all over the white cigarette filter.

“Excuse me, do you need a lighter?”

A hand pops into her field of vision, disrupting her thoughts. She notices the freckles on tan skin first, then the voice rich with power.

Clarke looks up, and meets the stranger’s eyes, a smile ready to take him up on his generous offer.

But you don’t forget those eyes, and so her smile drops. They’re dark brown, crystallized.

She’d seen them overflow with adoration in a dimly lit room.

A split second and then his hand falters, fingers still wrapped around a cherry red lighter.

“Are you-” he starts, and then pauses. His voice sends shivers down her spine. Like always, his shirt is perfectly ironed - tonight, purple, and his sleeves are rolled up like there is some work he can’t put off.

He still smells like musk and sandalwood.

But his eyes widen now, and Clarke would laugh if her heart hadn’t sunk.

“Am I _what?_ ” she counters, tucking the cigarette behind her ear and crossing her hands at her chest. She counters because this is _her place_. This is _her space_.

Who is _he_ to disturb her here, defying their very own little law of the dimly lit bar fantasies?

He blinks and then there’s recognition as clear as day, “Yeah, you’re her.” A second, and then. “Princess.”

The word is like a stone to glass between them, and everything changes.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

He shrugs, and she realizes she doesn’t even know his name.

For months, he’d been coming to the bar every Friday, paying too much to watch her dance, holding her in a way only exiles held - knowing that nothing they touch is really theirs to keep.

Then he breaks into a smile, pearly whites everywhere.

“I came to see Clarke Griffin’s exhibit. I was told they’re an amazing artist.”

It hits her then, like thunder struck right there in the middle of downtown Arkadia, on the pavement littered with cigarette butts.

_He doesn’t know who she is._

“Did you like the paintings?”

He nods. “I bought three.”

Clarke’s heart plummets again, and then it picks up with a vengeance. He’s fucking with her, he’s _fucking_ \- “How dare you?”

In a second, she’s forgotten all about their bar, about his smile, about his hands, and the pained way he’d removed her fingers when she wanted to examine his scars.

All Clarke can see now is his smile, so obviously deceitful, and the money stacking up at the bottom of her closet, in Nyko’s pocket - a $20,000 check, in the way he moves.

In the way _all_ men like him move.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

The passersby turn to stare, but Clarke is just getting started. The idea that _he_ could be different from all the men who had come to the bar to watch her dance and left once they realized they could never have her is long forgotten.

“ _Excuse_ me?” he asks, giving her a once-over that makes her feel small. She’d seen adoration once, and now she sees cruelty, his skin pulled taut against his cheekbones, the corners of his lips curling in distaste.

She’s about to step forward when a warm hand wraps around her elbow and pulls her back. “Clarke, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I need you inside and- oh, Mister Blake. I see you’ve met our star.”

She watches realization dawn in his eyes, but it’s too late.

Clarke turns to Niylah and hisses, “Give me the check.”

“Clarke, what - “

“Give me the check. He bought three paintings, and they’re not his to buy.”

Blake raises an eyebrow. “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

Niylah glances between her and Blake, only to mutter, “Clarke, I’m not sure what’s going on, but this really isn’t the way - “

Clarke spins around on her heel, just ice in her heart. She knows men like him. She wants to owe _nothing_ to men like him.

“I said - give me the check. I’ll pay you back.”

When Niylah’s left, she turns around to face him. “ _Blake?_ ”

No longer confused, now he glares at her. Every muscle in his body that she can see on this summer night is taut, and he locks his jaw.

“That’s my name. Bellamy Blake.”

Of course, she should have known. The good boy of the Blake family.

But as a Wallace-Griffin, Clarke knows there’s nothing _good_ about the good children of wicked families.

“Here’s a lesson for you, Bellamy Blake,” she lowers her voice, steps close enough to touch him. Memories return; the lights. The velvet. The brush of his hand against her bare skin. The desire to _burn_ into him, a hunger like nothing she’d ever felt before.

“Your money is no good here. And if you thought you could buy me, you were wrong.”

“I wasn’t trying to _buy_ you, Princess,” he shoots back, lowering his voice to a dangerous pitch. “I just liked the fucking paintings. I had no idea _you_ were Clarke Griffin.”

The stacks of cash on her floor. Thousands by thousands. Friday nights. Red heels, glitter. All that pink neon pooling everywhere, catching in his collarbones. He’d touch her and she’d come alive.

Clarke closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“I don’t want to see you again.”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond. She doesn’t wait for Niylah.

Clarke Griffin, the daughter of one of the two families in the city of Arkadia that know cruelty, walks away.

*

The next Friday night, she dances again.

Bellamy Blake is not there.

In his mind, he goes from ‘He,’ an almost sacred pronoun, to ‘Bellamy Blake,’ the man who tried to buy her, as if she could be bought with money. As if he had what it took to buy her.

 _No one_ had what it took to buy her.

So Clarke - Princess - dances, and the music blasts past her.

She moves out of habit, robotically swinging her hips and collecting the bills they throw at her just to see a flash of her tits. It disgusts her now, there’s no grace to _this._

At least when _he_ watched her dance, he had the courtesy to look appreciative.

These men just want another hole to shove their feelings into. If they’d only wanted to fuck her, she could understand that. But the thing is, she watches them crave something more - something she would _never_ freely give them, because it would mean taking from her own self.

Selfish men, always looking for the front door mat that would wipe them clean.

But Clarke isn’t anyone’s front door mat.

Later, she watches the paintings in her spare room for the longest time.

Night and day trade places, and then she reaches for the knife on the kitchen counter.

She takes the knife to her paintings like taking a knife to her heart.

She rips them all up, shoves the art school diploma under her bed, and pours herself a drink.

“We tried, baby,” she tells Aria, running her fingers through her cat’s dark fur. Aria purrs under her touch and Clarke smiles. “I think it’s time for us to stop fooling ourselves, huh?”

This time, Aria is quiet and Clarke thinks: yeah, this is the one thing I can understand.

*

That final Friday, she dances like she’s never danced before.

She dances for all the years she’s spent here in front of an appreciative but undeserving audience. Lets her body turn mellow and easy, slithers across the stage, feeling every inch of the cold burn against her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

She _savors_ it, one last time.

When she finally opens her eyes, all the men are gone.

There’s just _him_ , sitting in the front row.

“Bravo!” he shouts, clapping so harshly that the glasses shiver. “What a performance!”

In this light, he doesn’t look like the man who adored her. He just looks cruel, and Clarke’s bones turn cold.

“What did you do with everyone?”

Bellamy Blake looks over his shoulder and then shrugs with a smirk. “They must’ve decided to go home.”

“I swear to God, if you did something - “

This time, he raises a placating hand, as if signifying surrender. He stands up to cross the few feet between his regular table and her stage. There’s danger in the way he smiles, no humor to it at all.

Now, he’s the man she knows him to be.

In the shadows, she can see his men. Of course he’s a Blake. He’s a Blake as much as she is a Wallace.

Both of them can run, but they always haunt themselves in the end.

“Relax, Princess. I just asked them to go home early.”

Before, she liked being on this stage, her bare skin everywhere. Now she just feels exposed.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

He takes a seat at the end of her stage, perilously close and too calm for her liking. For a second, she thinks he’ll reach out to touch her, but he keeps his hands in his lap.

“I wanted to explain myself if you’d like to have dinner with me.”

“I’m not going to have dinner with you.”

“A drink, then?”

Clarke shakes her head. “You have 20 seconds.”

At that, he laughs, throwing his head back at the neon stars turning their bodies into shades of pink, blue, and green. She watches the curve of his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the bitter laugh.

“Spoken like a true Wallace.” A beat and then, “Alright. Anywhere private. I promise I won’t do anything. But I also don’t want _them_ ,” he subtly nods towards the bartender and the bouncer, “to hear it. I don’t think you want that, either.”

Clarke runs the scenarios in her head. She has a gun in her boot anyway, so she nods. He can’t do anything to her that’s worse than what she wanted to do seven years ago.

“Give me five minutes.”

In the backstage mirror, Clarke removes her makeup.

She’s left naked with her own reflection, and she doesn’t like what she sees. She’s tried very hard to be different from her family. But now, when it comes down to it, she still remembers all the moves her father taught her, in case she needed to defend herself. She still knows how to kill a man with nothing more than a teaspoon.

She’s still capable of the same violence she was capable of at seventeen.

Blake is waiting for her by a sleek black BMW, music thrumming from it and pouring out into the back alley. He feels at ease here. The king and his castle, stretching as far as she can see.

They’re the only two people between the bricks. It sends fear down her spine, but it excites her, too.

The first thing he says is, “Are you thirsty?” When she shakes her head, he adds, “I promise the bottle hasn’t been opened.”

“Fine.”

He throws her a bottle, and smiles when she downs it in one sip. “I really did like your dancing.”

“I don’t dance anymore.”

It seems to actually disappoint him. His brow furrows, and the muscle in his jaw ticks, just as it had done when she tried to touch the scar.

Clarke bites down the urge to sympathize, to react.

“And even if I did, I wouldn’t dance for you.”

Blake lets out a sharp exhale, leaning back on the hood of his BMW and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, Wallace, you really - “

“It’s Griffin,” she corrects him. “As you already know.”

This time, he rolls his eyes at her, exasperated. “I _didn’t_ know. I came to the show because my sister showed me your work online, and I liked it. I didn’t know you were Princess.”

“But you knew I was a Wallace?”

He cocks his head at her, frowning. Then - “Yeah, I knew. But I didn’t come because of that.”

Clarke throws the empty bottle back at him, and watches his muscles tighten as he catches it in the very last second. His dark curls sway with the movement, even though there’s not even a whisper of wind in the furiously warm alley. Then, he returns his gaze to her. 

“And I don’t appreciate you wanting to deprive me of your paintings.”

“I get to pick who buys them,” she counters, leaning back on the brick wall. “And I sure as shit don’t want someone who made me dance like a fucking _monkey_ for him to buy my paintings and then think he owns me.

“I know men like you always think you can get what you want,” she continues, voice growing colder with each syllable. “You empty bars for your romps. You pay in hundreds. You get women who smile pretty at you. You get the paintings. You get the money. You get the turf. You get anything you’d like.

“But I’m not a thing to be bought. Not because I’m a Wallace, but because I don’t allow that. So if that’s what this whole shtick is about, I suggest you take a seat in your pretty Beemer and drive away.”

She lets her words settle into the late night silence. The lights in the bar go out. Cars stop cruising madly.

Then, Bellamy Blake stands up and crosses the distance between them. He’s a flash of light one second, illuminated by the headlights, and then a whisper of darkness the next.

When he finally appears in front of her, Clarke holds her breath.

He touches her.

One hand weaves into her hair, resting on the back of her head, and the other comes up to gently cup her cheek.

There’s something in his eyes now that Clarke recognizes. The softness, the adoration, with just a little danger at the edges. But it’s too late now that she knows the cruelty, too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “But I’m not sorry for showing up to your gallery, or for buying the paintings. They’re fucking beautiful paintings, and you’re a fucking beautiful woman.”

He runs a thumb across her lips, and comes away with red. His eyes go dark as they meet hers, and he licks off her gloss from his thumb, his lips popping obscenely around the traces of her.

“It’s a shame you’re a Wallace, but it changes nothing. You did something to me. And I don’t want you any less.”

Then, he moves in and Clarke draws a sharp inhale, ready for him to kiss her and break the spell. Break the tension coiling in her belly like a snake, all that rage and desire and -

He steps away, squeezing her waist lightly and then backing away to a safe distance. Clarke can’t shake off the feeling of incompleteness. His lips were right there.

“So if you can accept my apology, I would love to have dinner with you. As Bellamy and Clarke, not a Wallace-Griffin and a Blake. Not,” he waves his hand vaguely towards the bar, “ _this._ ”

She wants to kiss him, and she wants to kill him.

Wants to tie a cinder block to his legs like they do in the movies, and wants to rip that red shirt he’s wearing to shreds.

She wants to ruin him in so many more ways than one.

So she grins, wild.

“Sure. Let’s see how that’s gonna work.”


	2. Move for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being so damn sure that she wanted to do nothing with the man who came to watch her dance, Clarke has dinner with Bellamy. | _She doesn’t know how it happens. All she hears are the fractures; the tell-tale signs of glasses who’ve come too close when they shouldn’t have, and now they’re sending shards flying everywhere. The plates smash across the floor. Suddenly, Clarke’s arms are full of him, and he’s gripping her waist, dragging her across the table knees-first and into his arms. “Day in and day out, my fucking Princess.”_

For her part, Clarke does her research.

His biography states that he graduated from Yale, and now invests in startups. An elaborate money-laundering ploy, for sure, but Forbes still covers his ventures just as much as Arkadia News covers allegations that he’s active in the Blake crime family.

It seems as though his sister is the head of the family now, at least publicly. She has a record, which only means that she’s their scapegoat.

Bellamy’s record is spotless.

There are no Instagram photos of him sipping lattes, but she performs a reverse image search and sees plenty of posts from his nephew’s account, basketball games - the two of them wearing Arkadia Spacewalkers jerseys and cheering in the front row.

His degree is both in history and business management, and wherever she looks, Clarke can’t find a single thing wrong with him.

This, of course, means that there’s plenty wrong.

At the same time, Clarke’s curiosity makes her take out a red dress buried in the depths of her closet and wear diamonds to their dinner. She doesn’t know where they’re going, but she’s pretty sure Abby put a tracker in all her shoes - just in case.

It’s the family way.

She stands on the curb outside of her building at exactly 8pm on a Saturday night, perfectly polished. She made sure to look irresistible. After years of learning what men want, it’s a second nature.

He’s not late, but not early, either.

She sees his car before she sees him.

The BMW smoothly navigates Arkadia’s pothole-ridden streets. There’s an ease to him when he steps out, and he moves gracefully towards her, standing by the building’s door, way too dressed up for this neighborhood.

“Clarke,” he says, and she finally breathes out. “You look beautiful.”

She takes his hand, and lets him help her to his car. The leather is smooth against her skin, and the AC is blasting enough to forget about the heat she and summer share now.

Still, she presses her thighs together in anticipation.

“Where are we going?”

Bellamy cocks his head at her, a glint in his eye. His right hand is already on the stick shift, perilously close to her knees. He changes gear smoothly, a cat-like ease of living to him.

Danger, when he hits the gas pedal like he knows exactly who she takes him to be. The prince of Arkadia.

Who could ever say no?

But instead of touching her or proving her right, he says, “It’s a secret.”

They drive in silence interspersed with radio station songs talking about bad blood and wicked loves. They move past office buildings and night clubs. Bellamy is quiet without a tension to it. Clarke keeps her face focused on the road ahead so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

When they stop right in front of his office building, Clarke nearly gasps.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“Relax,” he says, gentle. The air between them shifts, both becoming painfully aware of who they are behind their facades. “No one’s going to see you here.”

They board the elevator, and he presses the button that takes them straight up to the rooftop. She thought there would be people, but once they reach the final floor, there’s no one.

Just a single table, lit up with candles, and two glasses of wine waiting for them.

Clarke looks around, just to make sure there’s no one hiding in the shadows, and Bellamy laughs.

“Really? You think I’d dare?”

“What _I_ think,” she starts, peering around one corner, then the other, “is that you once said you could do whatever the hell you wanted, so I’d like to make sure.”

Bellamy takes her hand again, and for the first time, she actually looks at him.

Back at the bar, he’d often come with ruffled hair, a three-day beard on his cheeks.

Now, his cheeks are razor-smooth, he smells clean and warm, and the striped suit suits him perfectly.

And he’s smiling at her.

“Seriously, Princess, I wouldn’t harm you.” When Clarke shoots him a look, Bellamy shrugs. “Do you mind the nickname? I kinda like it.”

The wine is good, the dinner is pleasant, but they don’t really speak. He glances at her sometimes, looking like he’s going to break the silence and start a conversation ( _Where did you go to school? Do you have pets? How come you’re not dancing for me anymore?_ ), but she clacks her fork against the porcelain, and he returns his gaze to the plate in front of him.

It’s only when she’s finished with her lobster thermidor - Bellamy still eating - and leaned back in her seat, toying with a glass of wine, that she breaks the spell and asks:

“When was the first time you killed a man?”

Bellamy chokes on his food and has to drink wine to stabilize his breathing. He’s peering at her like a wild animal now, almost frozen. Like she’s just going to say she was kidding, and _what does he think of this crazy weather?_

But Clarke doesn’t. She just leans back, and waits, tapping her high heels against the floor. If all the masks are gone now, then they should be gone for good.

So after a moment or two, Bellamy straightens up in his seat, looks her in the eye, and says, “Sixteen. I was defending my sister.”

Clarke nods, figuring that makes sense.

“I was seventeen.”

This seems to surprise him, and she delights in watching his eyes widen, only to be replaced by a neutral expression he must have perfected throughout the past thirty years of doing what all the Blakes did.

“Diyoza’s men attacked my family home.”

Then, she sees it dawn on him, just like it dawned on him outside the gallery. “Wait, wasn’t Lexa Woods the one who killed those men?”

Clarke shakes her head.

No, Lexa wasn’t the one who slaughtered ten men in cold blood, just to make sure that all the kids in the Wallace house remained unharmed.

Lexa wasn’t the one who not only commanded her men to open fire, but opened fire herself, reloading her old grandfather’s gun with sharp, surgical precision. One bullet, one casing, one bullet, one casing - into infinity.

Lexa wasn’t the one whose breath was taken away by a strong man’s strong hand around her neck, and she decided to punish him for that not with a gun, but with a hunting knife. Did she want to send a message, or rage across his body?

Some days, Clarke still wonders.

“No, it wasn’t Lexa.”

But Lexa did pay for it.

“So now you know,” Clarke says finally, and takes a sip of her wine. They settle into the silence again, Arkadia gleaming around them.

“From what I’ve heard, I think you did the right thing.”

“By letting my girlfriend die in jail for me?” Clarke counters, already feeling herself closing up. She only came here to do this - to show him that kitty’s got claws, so he can back the _fuck_ up.

But Bellamy’s eyes soften, just like they did at the bar, and she wants to kill him for it.

“You did what you had to do.”

“So you do what _you_ have to do, right? Just like me? You let your sister take the blame as you pretend to be a big venture capitalist?”

Bellamy shakes his head, but a muscle in his jaw ticks and she knows she’s found his weakness. “I’m not pretending to be anything I’m not. I invest. I smuggle. I trade. It’s what we do to survive.”

Clarke motions around them theatrically, the silk sliding against her skin with every move she makes. Everywhere she looks, there’s expensive glass, even more expensive leather, and food that costs thousands of dollars.

“You call _this_ survival?”

Now, he raises his glass and tips it at her before taking a sip. Then, he bares his teeth.

“Is that why you came here? To provoke me?”

“I didn’t - “

“No, I get it. This is fun for you, right? The little Wallace princess, hopping around town, knowing she can’t be touched.”

He leans back, smirks at her, but there’s no humor in there. Just anger.

“Want to know what I think?”

Clarke spreads her arms and sneers, “Please.”

“I think the real reason why you had a problem with the paintings was because _I_ bought them. It must burn like hell to know that you’d been dancing for a Blake.” He gestures towards Arkadia’s skyline, smiles mirthlessly. “You’ve got all this on a silver platter. Why the hell would you have dinner with me?”

Clarke mulls his words over, tastes them in her mouth, and then stands up.

Disregarding everything he’d said before, she asks, “Before I leave, I’d like to know why you kept coming to the bar. You’re Bellamy Blake. What did you want with strippers?”

It’s all mixed up in her head - this Bellamy, and the man who kept on coming to the bar. Some nights, he looked bone tired. Some nights, it looked like he only came alive with her touch.

If she was softer on him, so be it.

If she came back home with a spring in her step thinking of the way he looked at her, so be it.

But she has trouble reconciling that man with the one who’s bitterly glaring at her from the top of his bone-and-blood castle.

And even though Clarke may be her mother’s daughter, knowing that she’s ruined his night doesn’t make her feel good.

It just makes her feel empty.

“I wanted to see _you_ ,” he hisses at last, rising up from his seat, as well. If she’s got ice, he’s got fire. “I didn’t want anything to do with strippers, I wanted to see _one_ ,” he raises his finger for emphasis, voice lowering to a growl, “dancer. And it was you.”

The finger turns to point at her, and Clarke slaps it away.

“You’re a fucking liar.”

“And you’re acting like a fucking princess right now.”

“Well, I can.”

“Not in my house you can’t.”

She doesn’t know how it happens.

All she hears are the fractures; the tell-tale signs of glasses who’ve come too close when they shouldn’t have, and now they’re sending shards flying everywhere.

The plates smash across the floor.

Suddenly, Clarke’s arms are full of him, and he’s gripping her waist, dragging her across the table knees-first and into his arms.

They’re flying for a second, and then his exhale is warm on her mouth, his back hitting the floor, and her hand finding purchase next to his head with a ferocious passion.

She’s panting, and he’s still hissing at her, cursing out her name, and everything she’s made him feel -

“ _Fuck_ you for doing this to me. Fuck you, Cla-”

She silences him with a bruising kiss.

It’s a battle, but Clarke leans into it, presses her kiss on his mouth - the one thing she could never do at the bar. She finds his tongue in a second of heat, both of them giving as good as they’re getting.

Bellamy wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her even closer. She can feel the warmth of him, the strength in how he presses her close, and she can feel him hard against her belly, grinds into the feeling and moans into his mouth.

For a second, she’s briefly aware that her knees are bleeding, and so are his elbows, all that glass everywhere, but neither of them care about _that_ warmth.

There’s warmth between their bodies and so much damn anger that she pours it all into the kiss, the tension in her belly finally uncoiling, his skin all she can touch and taste and feel.

Finally, he is everywhere.

“How the fuck do you dare feed me your lies,” she growls, presses a kiss to his neck and digs her nails into his sides until he hisses. “One dancer? Like I think I’m that special,” she unties the top of her dress, lets it fall down and cascade against his shirt, “Like I’m just going to fall to my knees at the sight of you.”

Bellamy’s hands snake up towards her breasts, and Clarke throws her head back when he finally palms them, careful hands on her searing skin. In a moment of delirious heat, her eyes find the ice cubes lying on the floor, almost thawed, and she presses them against her neck, to relieve herself even just for a second.

Bellamy lifts himself up on his elbows with a wince, and licks the cold trail clean off.

“You showed me something, Clarke,” he whispers into her neck. When she tries to protest, he silences her with a kiss. “I’m not going to apologize for coming to see you.”

He licks at the column of her neck, his hands greedy against her back again, sliding down to cup her ass and _pull_.

“Day in and day out, my fucking Princess.”

Clarke doesn’t care about humiliation anymore, she melts under his touch. Moans out loud, so loud that she thinks half of Arkadia can see how shameless, how stupid she’s being right now.

“Don’t call me that.”

And Bellamy laughs, a wicked chuckle. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re just mine. You’re all fucking _mine_.”

The velvet of his voice turns into a growl and she knows they’re too far gone to back away now. She remembers the heat in the back alley, and she reaches for his shirt, carefully unbuttoning every ivory piece, only to find the plane of his chest already glistening with sweat.

“I’m no one’s. I’m no - “

“But you never danced for anyone like you danced for me, did you?” he asks, and there it is. A solitary finger tracing the skin where her back meets her stomach, Bellamy finally enveloping her waist and rubbing patterns into the soft skin by her bellybutton. “Come on, Clarke. Just admit it.”

With one hand holding her upright on him (finally sprawled on top of him - every inch of her skin pressing against his clothed body, all this want and nowhere to put it), the other dips into her underwear, and Bellamy laughs.

“There you go. All wet for me. Again.” His thumb finds her core, and rubs circles into her skin. Not enough for her to get off, but enough to know that he’s torturing her, and Clarke wants to do something - she wants to do _anything_ \- but she’s incapable of the most basic tasks, just stupidly paws at his belt and falls flat on his chest.

An animal gone stupid with heat, she has to let Bellamy take her hands and move them to the side, unfasten the belt on his own, and then - only then - let her touch him with a soft look in his eyes. Like he has all the understanding for a creature like her.

Like they’re the fucking same.

“And I bet you’d dance for me even now if I asked nicely.” He brushes a sweaty curl off her forehead, keeps his thumb there.

She hates it, and she loves it, and so she kisses him again.

“You’re not that bad, huh?” he asks, lazy, tracing the point where her forehead meets her cheek, and she leans into the touch. “You’re still my Princess.”

“Your Princess.”

The words feel heavy on her tongue, so she palms him through his underwear, snakes a hand inside and finds him ready for her. It’s a terrible feeling, letting someone call her theirs, so she wants a distraction.

She does everything she can to coax that cursed look out of his eyes, but he stops her with one hand on her wrist, and the other on her jaw.

“Clarke. Look at me.”

He’s earnest now and it’s the one thing she can’t take, so she tries again, but he’s stronger.

“Stop, come on.” His fingers turn gentler, and he pushes her up softly, makes her unlatch from him like she’s a needy bird begging to be fed. “What’s up, Princess? Tell me, huh?”

There’s bitterness rising in her throat and Clarke covers her face with her hands, still sitting right there on his thighs with her bloody knees and his bloody elbows, and she doesn’t want this man to care for her. She just wants him to hate her, but she can’t even do that one thing right.

“This was a mistake.”

She tries to get up, but he grabs her ankle, and she finds herself falling soft on him again. This time, he doesn’t let her turn to flesh. This time, Bellamy adjusts her in his lap, and cradles her in his arms.

Clarke is a fucking mess, half-clothed, but this doesn’t feel like the bar.

At the bar, she had power. Now, she feels like she’s on the verge of breaking down, and there isn’t a thing she can do to stop it.

“I’m sorry. And I fucking hate you for this.”

“You hate me?” he asks, presses a kiss to her hair. She can feel a smile in his voice when he speaks again. “Alright, we can work with that.”

They stay like that for the longest time, Clarke kneeling on his thighs, her knees going bloody until there’s no blood anymore, Bellamy whispering sweet nothings. She craves it, and it’s horrible - knowing that it’s been years since someone touched her like this, since she allowed someone to just hold her.

At some point, he shifts them, lifting her up with impossible ease as she holds on to him. He brushes away the glass littering the floor, making sure he lays her down on clean ground, the cold floor cooling her down.

“How about you let me do something for _you_ now, huh?” he offers, and smiles up at her, his eyes meeting hers and staying locked, even as he slowly takes her dress off, puts it neatly to the side.

Clarke watches him sink between her legs, transfixed with the image of him - his broad, freckled shoulders slotting in perfectly. His lips, starting a butterfly kiss trail from her knees, and growing deeper and dirtier as he moves towards her core.

His soft laugh, when his tongue first touches her, and the hands she has to fight so as to not just weave them into his curls and pull.

“I didn’t know you wanted me this much,” he says, running a finger through her folds and coming away with glistening traces of her. He observes the proof of her want reverently, and then raises his finger to his mouth, closes his eyes at the first taste of her. “Fucking perfect.”

He licks at her like he’s fucking starved, and Clarke doesn’t know what she’s feeling - all she can feel is his need for her, and it wears her down, makes her collapse and collapse, until she’s doubling over, her head nearly touching his own, his hands still steady on her hips, holding her down.

“There you go, Princess,” he encourages her, coaxing a wave after wave out of her. “That’s what you’ve been needing all along, huh?”

The torture goes on for what feels like hours, and Clarke’s body sags against him. When he’s finally satisfied, when he’s glistening wet with her on his chin, she licks it all off, feeling like a fucking animal. She’s humiliated, and she’s perfect, and the world is hard, and it’s the softest she’s ever felt it.

At the center of it, there’s him.

“I need you,” she whispers into his curls, arms heavy on his shoulders. She can’t really move, every part of her feels like it’s been set ablaze. “I need you.”

“Where do you need me, baby?” he asks, smiling into her cheek. He plants a kiss there. Then, a kiss on her jaw. Then, he mouths something dirty into her collarbone, and his knees push her up. Like a ragdoll, she lets herself be adjusted.

“Use your words, Princess.”

“In me.”

Clarke swallows on nothing, her throat sore and dry.

“I need you in me.”

Bellamy grins at her, his eyes going impossibly dark.

“That’s more like it.”

He does whatever the hell he wants with her, after. Clarke lets him raise her up and just as she’s ready to sink onto him, he teases her, mercilessly dragging himself across her already oversensitive folds. She complains and Bellamy just laughs.

Then - she barely senses the change - he slowly lowers her down, sinking into her slowly and tortuously.

“How’s that feel, baby?” he asks, encouraging her through the stretch, patting her sides. “Hey, just take it easy.”

The feeling is unbearable at first, feeling so full. Then Clarke realizes she’s full with _him_ , and it’s enough to make her stretch, roll out her muscles, smile.

“Fucking perfect.”

And like it’s all he needed to know, Bellamy grins up at her, and sets a slow, rolling pace, his hands guiding her hips. Clarke has to do very little, so she closes her eyes, enjoys the feeling of him finally. Something in her wants to scream that this is it, this is everything she’s ever wanted since the first time he came to the bar, but there’s a silence in her that won’t budge.

There’s a silence in her that keeps her eyes on his once she finally opens them, and this silence studies his features, the curve of his mouth and the press of his eyes.

“Look at me, Bellamy,” she tells him, moving his hands from her hips to her breasts, their rhythm picking up like a punishment. “Look at me. What did I need all along?”

He opens his eyes like it pains him, and there’s still blood under his elbows, and her knees are an open wound, but Bellamy opens his eyes. For a second, it’s like he doesn’t know the answer.

Then he ceases all movements and lifts himself up again so they can be face to face, her chest pressing against his, her spine ramrod straight as she looks at him. The adoration is still there, with him inches deep in her, and Clarke feels every muscle clenching around him.

But there’s something different now.

This time, he changes the pace.

This time, he pulls out and slams her down with a defiant gravity.

His features contort, he growls.

“There it is. What do I need, Bellamy?” Clarke pants, grinning back at him wild like that night in the alley, like the night she would’ve sunk to her knees for him. She’d have fucking danced if he asked. “What do I need?”

“Someone,” he starts, baring his teeth at her, and then pressing his lips to her shoulder. Something stops him from being cruel, and she dives her fingers into his hair, makes him look at her again. “Who,” another slam, and Clarke’s breath is taken from her, but this she freely gives, “can,” Bellamy smiles at her then, open and feral, and Clarke uses her own muscles to sink down on him again, reveling in the way his mouth parts.

“Someone who can what, Bellamy?”

As if he knows the ending of the story, he lays her back again, and spreads her legs wide. Aching for him, Clarke lets him press her knee against her chest and sink back in, deeper than ever before.

“You wanna know?” he demands, pushing in again, sending her sliding back on the floor. “You really wanna know what you need, Princess?”

He grabs her chin and presses a searing kiss to her lips.

“You need someone who can fuck you _good_.” He slams back in again, this time the pace too deep and heavy for her to hold her own. “You need someone who knows what they’re doing around a woman like you.”

His hand tightens on her chin, and she’s gone, her eyes slamming shut at the wave of oncoming pleasure when he hits the right spot, over and over again with a smile like he knows just what he is doing.

And he does.

“You need _me_.”

*

The next morning, she finds roses on her doorstep.

The morning after, there are waffles and a note. _Thank you for the dinner. P.S. It’s your turn._

Then, she finds him waiting in front of the gallery. For a second, she wants to start yelling, but then she drops the fight.

“I wasn’t replying to your messages,” she acknowledges.

Bellamy just shrugs, looking up at the sun and sheltering his eyes. “It’s not that. I thought you might need a ride. It’s really fucking hot today.”

Clarke laughs, but lets him take her canvas and place it in the backseat of his car. Sitting right next to him in his car, she feels like something precious, but she doesn’t have a name for that yet, so she asks:

“How’s your nephew?”

Bellamy looks surprised, but smiles. “He’s fine. How are Nyko and Niylah?”

“Annoying the hell out of me, thanks.”

They both did their research, so they compare it over kebabs on the outskirts of Arkadia. It’s just a few miles away from her home, but even if it weren’t, Clarke would feel safe here with him.

That’s her problem. That she feels safe with _him_.

By all means, it shouldn’t be so. But his hand is gentle on the small of her back, navigating her across the field from the food truck, and he’s laughing at her jokes, and it’s good.

It’s good, which is why she has to ask.

“What is it that you think we could do?”

She doesn’t want to say _be,_ because it’s an awfully presumptive verb and she doesn’t want to be that person. Still, Bellamy smiles at her between bites of his kebab.

“Let me quote you quoting me: whatever the hell we want.”

Clarke chuckles at that, hands him a napkin. “I’m serious, Bellamy.”

He leans forward, his elbows now covered in butterfly bandages. A part of her wonders who it was that patched him up, if it wasn’t her under an exposed light bulb and with a bottle of whiskey on the sink, as it should have been.

“I like you. We could be friends.” Clarke’s heart sinks, and then he brushes his thumb against her knuckles. “We could be more.”

“And our families?”

“We’re adults. If they have a problem, they can bring it up. I don’t intend on talking shop with you. Do you?”

Clarke shakes her head. She doesn’t even know what’s going on in the shop these days anyway.

“So that’s settled. But you still owe me dinner. Any ideas?”

*

For a while, that’s how it goes.

They meet up for dinner. When it’s her turn, she takes him to regular restaurants, mom and pop shops that have been around for decades. Pizza and takeaway places where she watches him page through the laminated menu and eat off of checkered tablecloths.

Bellamy always dresses too well, and once she calls him out on it, says, “I’ll keep taking you to these kinds of diners, you know? You don’t have to get all dolled up.”

But he just smiles and shrugs. “I don’t mind.”

At some point, he tells her what life was like growing up - that dreaded family conversation. Hearing it from him, the Blakes become a family like any other.

Their mother running the show, but also running the bath when the kids got too dirty playing in the street.

Way too little money. No pocket change for $2,000 suits.

“I think we went wild, honestly,” he tells her, another night, this time a Lebanese restaurant down the street. “Octavia bought all the shoes she could. I started with suits and stuck by them.”

“That doesn’t sound bad at all,” Clarke notices, stealing a potato from his plate and grinning when he pretends to be offended. “I like your suits.”

When it’s his turn, he takes her to fancy places neither of their families frequent.

It doesn’t slip her notice, that they’re still keeping whatever the fuck they are under the wraps. They’re not hiding around, but Bellamy still waits for them to get in the car to kiss her.

“What about you?” he asks one night, after the waiter has finished refilling their glasses.

At someone point, Clarke stopped looking at the prices next to dishes, and resorted to sliding the menu covered in leather to him and saying, ‘ _Just order what’s good.’_

“What about me?”

“Family, childhood... You know how it goes.”

The question is innocent, but Clarke still doesn’t like it. They promised not to talk shop, and _shop_ was everything she had until she left. Even now, she still remembers too much. Ever the curious kid who wanted to know everything about family business.

Once she realized what they were really doing, it still changed nothing.

“I’m an only child,” she starts, ticking off the items she told all her other dates, as well. Generic information, impersonal information that no one could use against her. “My parents married late in their lives, so they spoiled me to bits.” Bellamy grins, and Clarke rolls her eyes. “My dad died when I was fifteen. My best friend - “

The thought of Wells still pains her and fortunately, the waiter saves her. Bellamy orders for both of them with impeccable charm in his voice and kindness that no longer surprises her, knowing what she knows now.

Then, he looks at her for the longest time.

“I know that, Clarke. I’m sorry.”

Wells’ death made all the headlines. Sometimes she forgets that she can’t even give impersonal information away without him recognizing it.

“Anyway, I liked to play softball. How’s that for a background story?”

Bellamy acquiesces with a smile, “I’ll take it.”

For a while, it’s good.

She gets a job waiting tables, tries painting only to drop it in frustration, eyeing the knife she used to slice her last canvas, and pretends like she’s doing nothing new when her mother asks.

Then Bellamy is picking up the tab at Lorenzo’s, a fancy Italian place downtown that gives their clandestine affair a dose of luxury, and when he reaches for his wallet, Clarke spots the gun tucked in his waistband.

“What’s that?” she asks in the garage, reaching around to palm the cold metal. He kisses her neck, gently removes her hand and puts it back on his waist. “I thought you didn’t use guns.”

“Tough times, Princess.”

But they don’t talk shop.

She turns on the news after coming home from work - too hard, pays too little - and sees his sister’s face everywhere, the same as her mother’s, but she turns her TV off.

Feeds Aria.

They don’t talk shop.

Even though they normally hook up in hotels, one night he brings her home.

He lives in an apartment in one of the nicer parts of the city, far away from the Factory Station - the part of the city that all the Blakes live in, named after a plant that was shut down decades ago.

His home is nothing like she’d have imagined.

The first thing she sees is dark teak and a huge bookshelf. His apartment looks a lot like him; it’s dark, rich, and full of stories. He smiles when she tells him as much, pours her some gin and takes her upstairs.

In his bedroom, the lights are dim, and it takes her a second to adjust.

“Let me just get the lights, I’m sorry. I don’t have people over often.” Bellamy chuckles. “I don’t have them over at all, actually, but - “

The rest of his sentence is lost.

She sees the paintings.

If he bought three paintings the first time around, then he must’ve come back for more because everywhere she looks, there are her paintings.

“ _Oh._ ”

She feels his hand on her back, but Clarke remains frozen in the middle of his bedroom. The Asphodels are there, and so are The Lights.

When she looks up, she can see The Gratitude Practice - a colossal shitshow of titans, stars, red and blue mixed together to form a furious night sky.

“You didn’t give them back.”

Bellamy shakes his head, and Clarke finally returns to reality, only it’s meshed with something else now.

“I liked them too much.”

She remembers the night now, months ago. It feels like eons have passed between the time he offered her a lighter, and she thought he wanted to buy her.

Well, maybe he _was_ buying her.

Maybe every word, every touch, and every gesture was buying her so effortlessly than she didn’t even notice.

“Do you know what this one means?” Clarke asks, pointing at The Gratitude Practice above them, her furious sky looking down on her, just like it always wanted to. Even the notion of where he decided to put it brings shivers to her spine.

Bellamy shakes his head.

“It’s called _The Gratitude Practice For Not Breaking Your Bones More Than Twice_.” She takes off her shoes, steps on his bed, and reaches for the ceiling. Her fingertips don’t even brush against it, and Clarke’s heart is so, so tired.

There she is, truly breaking her bones more than twice.

Bellamy just looks at her, uncomprehending. He offers a hand, but she stays right there, with her furious sky, and her pissed off stars, the entire scope of her deck formed to make her out to be the death and the fool at the same time.

She is so tired of it all.

“Come here,” she beckons him over until her hand reaches his skin, slips on his sweat. It’s October, but no one’s told Arkadia that it can’t be this scorching hot, so they find themselves burning up.

Bellamy comes to her like a zealot, ready to drop to his knees, but she spares him the humiliation.

“Lie down.”

She lets him slither between her legs, settle onto the pillows, watching her with that same adoration she’d seen at the bar.

When it comes down to it, there’s nothing else Clarke can do.

She dances for him.

She dances for him in his bedroom, her fingertips touching the lights hanging from his ceiling. Finally, his hands are all over. Finally, there is no blood - no cut knees and arms.

She touches Bellamy and thinks, _wasting away with you, I want to be wasting away with you._

Their nights, marble countertops, Egyptian cotton sheets, her paintings in his bedroom, like wherever she looks, she can only see herself. And then she meets his eyes and _oh,_ there she is.

There she is, like the only thing he can see.

Later, when they’re sated, when his thumb is rubbing imaginary patterns into her skin, she points at the ceiling again. “We always come back to where we began. There’s no end to it, Bellamy."

She exhales into his chest.

“We’ll always break our bones as many times as it takes. It’s the only thing we can do.”

They always come back to haunt themselves in the end.

*

In the months that follow, Clarke’s mother smiles at her. Bellamy smiles at her. Nyko and Niylah smile at her.

The world is perfect and feather-soft, with a sudden chill that comes in early December, once Arkadia finally remembers that it should come to terms with winter, and not hold on to this exhausting perpetual summer.

It’s all good, which is why Clarke knows something bad is about to happen.

They’re just having dinner that Tuesday, and it feels safe. Clarke caresses Bellamy’s cheek in public because Tuesdays are safe.

He feeds her tiramisu at Lorenzo’s. The waiter wishes them a good evening once they settle the tab, and she’s got Bellamy’s jacket around her shoulders, carelessly leaving her coat in his car.

“So I was thinking, if you’d like to meet Octavia, Jacob’s got a basketball game this - “

The snow is gently falling around them and it’s catching in his hair, Bellamy smiling down at her. Clarke finds herself nodding and nearly interrupting him when something else comes between them.

She feels the warmth first.

Then, she hears the buzz in her ears.

In a second, a red flower blooms on his shirt. In a second, Bellamy’s body sags against hers, her knees buckling up to shoulder his weight.

The snow between them turns crimson.

Clarke hears someone scream but doesn’t realize it’s her own voice - _too desperate_ \- and she falls to the ground with Bellamy. Just like that first night, she feels his warm exhale on her lips, his back to the snow, her body sprawled across his.

“Move! What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Clarke raises her head towards the voice, her hands pressed to the wound between Bellamy’s ribs, and meets Maya Vie’s eyes.

Someone is waiting for her in the Mercedes down the road, but Maya is frozen right there, staring at Clarke like an animal all out of places to run.

“Call an ambulance!”

Maya doesn’t move.

“Maya, come on! _Please_ ,” Clarke begs, but there’s nothing.

Just Bellamy gargling his own blood beneath her, the red underneath him spreading. Clarke raises her hand, and her pale skin is replaced with blood and snow.

Suddenly, she realizes.

“Did you know?” she cries out at Maya, still holding on to Bellamy. “Did you know? Fuck you, tell me!”

Maya nods.

“I’m sorry.”

After, someone from the restaurant calls an ambulance, and they have to pry Clarke off Bellamy’s body. They promise he’ll be alright. _She can come visit him. The doctors will do everything it takes._

They make a lot of promises but once the ambulance leaves, it’s just Clarke, standing dirty in the white snow, Bellamy’s jacket around her shoulders.

*

Clarke first meets Octavia Blake in the hospital hallway, and she’s sure the woman is going to punch her.

Instead, she locks her jaw - just like Bellamy - and asks: “Do you want coffee? I’m going to get coffee.”

Together, they sit and wait for the news.

They don’t talk, but Octavia notices her brother’s jacket around Clarke’s shoulders, and the keys of his car in her hands. It’s the only thing she thought to take.

She thinks about what’s happening behind the doors, and then: _wasting away with you. If this is it, I’d rather be in the cold dark earth, wasting away with you._

When the doctor opens the door, Clarke exhales.

“He’s in bad shape, but if he makes it through the night, he’ll be in the clear.”

That night, they hold vigil by his hospital room door.

They can’t come in - he’s connected to all these fucking tubes that don’t leave any room for him, so they wait right there in the cold hallway that smells of antiseptic and grief.

As the night passes, Octavia constantly gets up to greet people.

Clarke spots men she’d seen on the news, women she’d never seen but who look deadlier than the men anchors have called killers. In time, the hallway overflows with them, standing side by side, their gazes fixed to the door of Bellamy’s room.

They all look at Clarke with interest, but no one makes a move.

By the time sun rises, Octavia takes a seat by Clarke, right there on the floor and says, “My brother cares about you, so you’re safe here. But I need you to tell me what happened.”

A lot of things go through Clarke’s head. She could lie, tell them she has no idea who shot him. Tell them it was just a drive-by, and maybe there was no deeper meaning to it.

But at the end of the day - or, to be precise, morning that rises with a cold bite of the sun - there’s only one truth.

The man she loves is lying in the room behind her, and no one’s sure if he’ll ever fully recover.

Maya Vie was sent to kill him, and she knew who would be there with him.

Her mother won’t pick up the phone.

The man she loves in lying in the hospital room, and no one’s sure if he’ll ever fully recover - because of her.

So Clarke looks at Octavia and nods.

Then, she starts from the beginning.


	3. Just one more time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy is shot, and it's up to Clarke to save them all and help him recover. THE FINAL CHAPTER.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's something to make your Monday sweeter. ;) Thank you again for all the support you've given me, and I hope you'll enjoy the last part of Princess.

By the time Bellamy wakes, Clarke’s hair is matted, she’s washed her teeth in hospital sinks too many times to count, and she’d still be bloody if Octavia hadn’t taken pity and brought her a change of clothes.

During that time, Clarke has had the time to think. She’s had the time to get pissed off, and she did.

She’s watching the news, announcing a hit on the Wallaces’ warehouses, when she hears a broken whisper.

“Water.”

Seeing Bellamy open his eyes for the first time in ten days makes Clarke’s eyes fill with tears, but she rushes to the sink and helps him drink from the cup. His lips are chapped, but she helps him get rid of the oxygen tubes, the oximeter steady at 98.

“You’re okay,” she tells him, carefully caressing his face. He tries to get up, eyes saying more than he physically can, but she stops him with a hand on his chest. “Slowly. The bullet grazed your aorta and your lungs.”

He nearly died, the doctors told her and Octavia. His heart stopped twice.

_Wasting away with him, I’d rather be wasting away with him._

“What-” he starts with a wheeze and widens his eyes, like the punctured sound surprises him. It’s no longer surprising to her - she _begged_ for wheezes, wheezes were better than not breathing at all, “the,” a deeper breath, “fuck happened?”

Clarke looks at her hands, looks back up at Bellamy.

“It’s my fault. It was my family.”

His eyes soften, but Clarke shakes her head.

“I told Octavia everything she needed to know. You’ll be safe here.”

Bellamy takes a long time to get to his breath again - oximeter reading 96 now - but then he tells her, “So will you.”

The nurse shows up soon enough, feeds the cannulas into his nostrils, and asks her to leave.

And Clarke doesn’t mind. Now that she knows he’s okay, she’s got work to do.

*

Her mother finally picks up the phone once the news of the Wallace stash house raid come out.

“I can’t believe you told them! What the _hell_ were you thinking, Clarke?”

Clarke smiles at Octavia, sitting right next to her at the table. She’s in the Blakes’ house and from what she can tell, she feels a hell of a lot safer than she ever did with her own damn family.

All the people she once used to fear now ask her about Bellamy, and offer to make her coffee like she’s one of them.

“ _How are you Clarke?_ Oh, I’m fine, mom. Someone tried to shoot my,” she starts, and struggles to name him, settles for - “partner, but hey. What can y’a do, am I right?”

“Clarke. This is not a game,” her mother hisses through the line. Clarke can hear the shuffling on her end. “You shouldn’t have been with him.”

“According to Maya, that’s _exactly_ where I was supposed to be. Since when are we sending messages to our own?”

Abby is quiet for a second.

“ _Are_ you our own?”

Clarke mulls it over. Like a monkey, she’s spent so many years pulled apart between the life she wanted to lead, and the life of her family.

Then, she saw Bellamy get shot. By her family.

There was no room for loyalty anymore.

“Not anymore.”

“I didn’t order the attack! Clarke, honey,” Abby tries, and Clarke hears the click of a lock. She must be downtown. Clarke can almost see her looking at Arkadia, scanning the skyscrapers in search of her daughter. “I’d like to talk to you. Your grandfather would like to talk to you. Why don’t we set a time and place and talk it over, just the three of us?”

Clarke shakes her head, staring at Octavia’s dining room table. Unlike the Wallaces’, there’s enough room for everyone at this one.

Even a Wallace.

“I’m sorry, mom. Call off your dogs, or I’ll set mine loose.”

Later, Octavia brings her whiskey, and they drink in silence.

During the past few weeks, Clarke has gotten to know her, as much as someone could get to know a woman like Octavia Blake. She has a sharp tongue, hard heart, but she’s fair.

If she’s one thing, she’s fair, and she rules her little kingdom with an iron fist.

“As much as I like moving in on the Wallaces, I have to ask... Are you sure?”

It’s a good question. _Is_ she sure?

They’re supposed to take Bellamy home tomorrow, bright and early. They’ll roll him in in a wheelchair, and someone’s supposed to check his pulse every hour. The doctor explained his med schedule to Clarke.

There are too many heart, lung, and kidney drugs in that mix.

One pill drags another in tow. To keep his heart safe, they have to risk his kidneys. There are too many ultimatums, all of which could have been avoided.

So when Octavia asks Clarke if she’s sure, it’s not just a matter of her family. It’s a matter of pointless violence that harmed the man she loves. Her anger burns like a coal at the bottom of her heart.

So Clarke takes her love and her life into her own hands. Because she’s never known how to love with half a heart, she smiles at Octavia.

“We keep our own safe. Let’s do this.”

*

Octavia’s lieutenants, Jasper and Raven, keep watch while the two of them and Monty, the Blakes’ resident IT expert, break into the Griffin Law headquarters.

“Are you sure it’s there?”

Clarke nods. She knows where her mother keeps everything of importance, and she’s always known that particular password. Not even her mother would dare change the password from Jake Griffin’s birth date to something else.

So when they climb the stairs to the penthouse, all the cameras fully online, Clarke tests her mother’s goodwill.

She enters her office like she’s coming home, and reaches right for the safe.

“This one’s for you, mom,” she tells the camera, and Octavia rolls her eyes, but still helps her open the door. The password hadn’t changed, even if everything else has.

By the end of the night, they have all the information they need to arrange a meeting with the Wallaces’ supplier and offer him a better deal.

Clarke’s phone doesn’t ring this time around.

Instead, she’s the one dialing Russell Lightbourne’s number. Lightbourne has been her family’s supplier and middleman for a long time, so he trusts her, even when she tells him there’s been a change in plans.

“I think I have a better deal for both you and me.”

They quickly arrange a meeting on the Arkadia docks.

Clarke strides into the warehouse with Octavia, the rest of their entourage waiting outside. The lighting is dim and she can barely make out the man, but years have taken their toll on him.

Among all the smuggled crates, overflowing with antiquities and shit no one’s supposed to export (but plenty of people want to buy for the privilege of tasting the forbidden fruit), Russel Lightbourne looks like their cursed city.

Worse for the wear.

“You look older,” she tells him.

Lightbourne smiles, shaking her hand. “So do you.”

“Let’s cut the niceties. Here’s what we have to offer.”

They spend two hours arranging the details of trade routes, quantities, and provenance. Most of the Blakes’ wealth came from arms trades, but there was a better way, if you knew where to find it.

When she first told Octavia about it, the woman had a hard time understanding.

The Blakes made their fortune in a simple way.

They first started with bets, Aurora Blake running an underground betting operation, and lending what little money she made at a high interest.

Then, as Bellamy and Octavia grew, a demand appeared for guns you couldn’t trace. A bit of white powder for powerful men who needed more time in their day. Never for kids.

“I think we get a clean 5% from that,” Octavia explained, shrugging, and Clarke had to resist the urge to gasp.

“Just _five_ percent?”

The Blakes might have been powerful, but their margins were a lot slimmer than the Wallaces’.

Clarke smiled at Octavia. “Have you ever thought about antiques?”

Antiques and antiquities, especially those that you weren’t supposed to buy and sell, always had a good price.

And there was no one like Russell Lightbourne to find the right suppliers and buyers.

By the end of the meeting, when Lightbourne’s men are serving drinks and Octavia has her combat boots on the table, Clarke finds him surveying her. Unlike other associates of Clarke’s family, Russell was the one who never underestimated her. Not since his daughter mysteriously wound up hanging from the side of a cliff after a benign hiking trip and wouldn’t tell anyone who did it.

If she insulted Clarke prior to that, well... It was just kids’ business. 

“Excuse me, but I’ve got to ask,” he says suddenly, raising his arms in defeat. “What’s a Wallace doing with Blakes?”

Before Clarke can speak, she feels an arm around her shoulders.

Octavia’s tell-tale rasp announces it to the world. “She’s a Blake now.”

Later, after stepping out of the shower and seeing herself in the mirror - hair too long, not a trace of elegance, just pure utility that keeps her going day in and day out, when Bellamy is too tired to speak, when she’s the only one who can take him to therapy - she figures: yes.

Clarke straightens up at seeing her own reflection and concludes that yes, she’s a Blake now.

Through and through.

*

“So Clarke took me to the park and when I told her mom hates it when I eat candy, you know what she said?”

Jacob Blake, 12, old enough not to call her _Aunt_ , young enough to look like he wants to as Bellamy benevolently listens to him from his bed in Octavia’s house, is full of stories about the day they spent together.

“What’d she say?” Bellamy asks, already grinning with a glint in his eye.

“She said: screw mom, we make our own rules.”

In the corner of the room, Octavia chokes on thin air and shoots a glare at Clarke, but she only shrugs. Jacob’s a good kid.

“I think she’s totally right,” Bellamy confides in him, leaning from his bed and wincing with the movement. The doctor said it had to get worse before it got better, but he was getting stir crazy and Clarke could feel it.

“Right? So I was - “

“Jake?” Octavia calls out, getting up to her feet and putting her thumbs through her belt loops. “You mind giving us a second? I think there’s a brownie with your name on it downstairs.”

He’s running out of the room before Octavia can even finish the sentence, and all three of them visibly relax, settling back into their natural expressions of chagrin.

When they’re with kids, it’s easier to lie. You _have to_ protect the kids.

But when they’re alone, there’s no one to protect by sugarcoating the truth.

“How did the deal go?” Bellamy asks immediately, lifting to seated. Clarke tries to help him, but he grimaces at her and she backs off. “Did Lightbourne agree to selling through us?”

“Yeah, he did. But the Wallaces aren’t going to let this go. You get that, right?” Octavia pinches the bridge of her nose, takes a seat right by Clarke. “Don’t get me wrong, Clarke. I appreciate what you’ve done. But we’re in deep shit.”

“They started it first.”

“That won’t matter if we’re the ones counting the bodies. We need to be smart about this.”

Realistically, Clarke knows Octavia is right.

She’s still angry with her family, but killing _Octavia’s_ entire family won’t change a thing. They need to negotiate. They need to do what her grandfather always liked doing: strike a deal in seemingly impossible circumstances, turn shit into gold.

“Think about it, okay?” Octavia says, getting up again and moving towards the door. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

There’s not much to leave them to.

These days, Clarke mostly falls asleep by Bellamy’s bed, talking until their throats are sore and their lips are chapped. Then, she drags herself back to her bedroom only after she’s made sure he’s breathing - twice.

She looks at him and it’s still the same man he loves, only this time it’s not up to him to protect her. She’s the protector now, and she can fill those boots.

Her whole life, she’d been trying to be different.

But now, the costume of cruelty and violence fits her like a glove. She finds herself liking the touch of the cool metal of Bellamy’s old gun against her palm.

At least it’s all for a good reason.

“How are you feeling today?” she asks Bellamy, taking a seat on the bed next to him.

He takes her hand into his, traces the scabs and the scars on her knuckles.

“ _These_ are new.”

“They’ve always been - “

“Cut the shit.” He looks at her, deadly serious. “You’re going out with them, aren’t you?”

“What am I supposed to do, Bellamy? My family did this.” She gestures towards him and then winces because - wrong move.

It only makes him more pissed off, and she’s trying to do all of this for him. For them. But she’s always doing the wrong things.

“I’m just trying to set it straight.”

She still remembers the warmth blossoming on his chest the night Maya shot him. His body, lifeless, eyes slowly closing on the night sky.

The hospital.

The violence.

“Clarke, you’re not going to set it straight by getting yourself killed. You didn’t have to be at the Lightbourne deal. You didn’t have to break into the headquarters. Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because I’m angry!” it comes bursting out of her, and she can hardly control herself, hurtles her body off his bed and towards the other side of the room because she can’t keep her voice down.

If she had stitches like Bellamy, all of them would be pulling apart.

“Because they hurt you, and because I’m so fucking angry and there isn’t anything else I can do to help! Because I can’t help _you_ ,” she motions towards him, and this time, lets herself absorb the hurt in his eyes, “and I can’t help Octavia, and I can’t stop this fucking train wreck. But I’m going to make sure we come out on top.

“Can’t you see, Bellamy? I’ve always known more about them than they knew about me. We can _use_ that.”

For a second, they’re both silent. Then Bellamy closes his eyes and whispers, “Get over here, Clarke.”

This time, she curls up on the bed next to him, his arms around her. 

“I told you we shouldn’t have done this,” she confesses into his chest. He’s wearing a soft cotton shirt now, looking down at her with mussed hair. Far from the sleek man who used to come watch her dance.

Far from the man who made her feel safe and good.

These days, Bellamy gets angry whenever she asks him if he needs anything. He glares at the crutches by his bed and sometimes, he doesn’t even want to get up for a walk.

Octavia and Clarke still come to him with plans and results, but it feels like he’s no longer there. He’s stuck in some world behind his eyes, a world neither of them can reach into.

So a part of Clarke misses the dancing days. Their future was yet untold, they were free to be whatever they wanted in her head.

Once, she imagined getting married to him, having a child with him. Sleeping in his apartment day in and day out, leaving the city during the weekends for a frolic in the sun.

They would be safe. He’d make sure they were.

But now, _she_ has to keep them safe, and no matter what Bellamy says, she’ll cut through that blood and violence to make sure they come up for air on the other side.

“You did,” he admits. Clarke told him their relationship was a bad idea once or twice in the beginning, when it was still fucking and shamelessly flirting.

Once she’d fallen in love, quitting him was the last thing she’d have thought of.

Bellamy drops a soft kiss to the top of her head, rubs his warm palms against her cold arms.

“I don’t regret a single thing.”

“I know.” Clarke chuckles, pats his chest, and slowly lifts up. “That’s why I worry about you so much.”

*

Her mother calls her on a Friday. Says, “We should talk,” and offers a time and place.

So Clarke gets dressed, and gives Raven and Miller the directions to her old family home.

Before that, Bellamy begs her not to go.

She sees him frown, and his voice picks up until he’s clutching at his ribs to keep his stitches from coming apart.

“It’s a bad idea, Clarke. I don’t want you there with them. Stay.”

First, she tries explaining. Then, she tries arguing. Later, she realizes he won’t budge. After, she just ignores his voice, flitting around the room, getting ready like she once used to for dates with him.

“Stay, _please_. We’ll find a different way.”

She ignores his pleas. Tells him not to wait up.

“Are you fucking suicidal?” he says finally, hissing at her. He’s making his way towards his crutches, and Clarke prays he doesn’t try to physically stop her from leaving. “Come on, just tell me that. Are you suicidal?”

His grimace - and it _is_ a grimace now, pain and fury mixed on his face like paint for her canvas - is unforgiving as he stares at her.

“Bellamy, I’m just - “

“Because what _I_ think is that you just have something to prove. So you’re going off to get yourself killed just to do it.”

“You of all people should know why I’m doing this,” Clarke counters, her makeup forgotten on the vanity table. “I’m just trying to protect your family, _our_ family. I am in this.”

_Our family_ hangs heavy in the air between them, like a spell rendering them immobile.

Bellamy blinks.

Then, he lets out a mirthless laugh.

“Jesus Christ, I wish I never met you.”

It hurts. It hurts, and Clarke just smiles back at him.

“You know what? Sometimes I wish the same thing.” Her smile widens as tears prick at her eyes. Bellamy standing motionless in the center of the room, with no intention of crossing the distance to hold her.

“So fuck _you_ , Bellamy.”

They don’t say goodbye, but Clarke puts her lipstick on.

When she crosses the threshold of her old family home, she’s stunned by the amount of memories that come bursting in uninvited.

The door, breaking in two under the force of a machine gun.

Lexa screaming at her to _get away,_ and pulling out the gun she kept tucked in her waistband.

All that blood on the floor.

The kids crying upstairs, her mother frantically calling out her name half an hour later.

The police.

The attorneys.

“I’m so glad you came, honey.”

Her grandfather’s voice stirs her from the past, and Clarke blinks until he comes into full focus. They haven’t spoken in ages, but Dante Wallace still sounds as comforting as he did when she was a kid.

That was the secret, of course. No one ever thought you did horrible things if you didn’t look the part. Wasn’t that what he told her after they sentenced Lexa?

“Grandpa.”

He smiles at her, and then frowns at Raven and Miller. “Do they have to be here? It’s not like we’re going to - “

“Hurt me?” Clarke supplies unhelpfully. She can sense her grandfather’s frustration but she beckons Miller and Raven closer. “Yeah, we tried that. It didn’t work.”

After a moment’s silence, Dante finally nods. “Fine. Shall we?”

He leads them to the salon. Cage and her mother are already there, Abby nursing what looks like her fifth whiskey, and Cage scowling without meeting Clarke’s eyes.

Suddenly, no one knows why they’re here.

Something between them has been irreparably broken, and Clarke would like to fix it, but sees no way.

Funnily, she thinks the same thing about her relationship with Bellamy.

Finally, her mother bitterly says, “Russell called the other day.”

“Did he?”

Abby purses her lips. “Apparently, you and Octavia Blake offered him a better deal for the... _things_ ,” she curls her lips with distaste at the word, “he acquires in Asia and Africa.”

“You understand, of course,” Dante interjects softly, as though Clarke is a child who doesn’t realize what she’s doing by poking the bear, “that his Asian and African products have been ours for two decades now.”

“Of course,” Clarke agrees, flashing her grandfather an innocent smile. She takes a sip of her wine. In the background, Raven and Miller whisper something, but Clarke can’t make out the exact words.

“Why would you jeopardize our income, sweetie?”

It’s a good question, so Clarke leans back into her chair. Mulls it over. Then, confidently, she states:

“Reparations.”

Her mother crooks an eyebrow. “What now?”

“Reparations?”

Clarke nods, smiles.

“Of course. Bellamy’s physical therapy is expensive, you wouldn’t _believe_ the amount. Then there’s dry cleaning for my dress, which Maya stained with his blood. His suit, of course,” she nods at her flabbergasted grandfather, “will have to be replaced. The tailor can’t work around the bullet wound.” For emphasis, she makes out the wound around her own ribs. “You know how it is.”

Her mother and her grandfather are staring at her.

Miller and Raven are laughing.

“And we’ll be married soon, I think,” she says nonchalantly, vaguely and visibly tracing the bare skin around her left ring finger. “I’d like a big wedding, and it’s only natural for the bride’s family to pay for it. It’s tradition.”

_Tradition_ comes out with a hiss, and once she’s satisfied, Clarke kisses her teeth, fixes her hair.

“So the way I see it, you’re paying us reparations.”

For a while, no one speaks. The maid comes in and out of the room, refilling glasses. Clarke puts a hand above her own. She’s had enough, of both alcohol and her family, now staring at her in shock.

Not even a fly dares to move in the crowded room.

Then it’s Cage who speaks, and it’s only to say, “You little _bitch_.”

Clarke moves to punch him in the face, but their grandfather is faster.

Dante Wallace’s slap reverberates in the quiet room.

“Do not _ever_ talk to your cousin like that again.”

Then, turning to face Clarke, he adjusts his expression into a schooled smile.

“Your mother told me how you two met, you know? Apparently, you’d been dancing in a bar downtown. Now, you know we never judged you for that. All of this,” he gestures around his frail body, encompassing the mansion but meaning much more, “could have been yours just as soon as you’d come back home.”

His expression shifts to pity, and bile rises in Clarke’s throat.

“Still, you chose him. I couldn’t understand why when Cage told me. He’s a Blake.” Unlike her mother, her grandfather’s face remains perfectly neutral as he says so. “You already have a kingdom. What would you want with his?”

Dante adjusts his cuff-links and then smiles again, takes a sip of his tea.

“Your mother thought you were rebelling. Cage thought you were always against us. But I know you, Clarke. I will never unknow you. We’re too similar, you and I.”

When Clarke moves to protest, her grandfather silences her with a raised hand and a pleading look in his eyes. “Please, Clarke. I was the one who taught you how to paint. I was the one who showed you that violence didn’t have to be the answer.”

“And you still had him shot!” she accuses, her body moving forward of its own volition. Clarke feels very little control. Just immense rage flowing through her body like electricity.

Like thunder struck, again, and now she’s left with scars.

Again.

Just a little monkey. Always a little monkey, dancing for all of them on a merry-go-round.

Her family, taking and taking and taking. Her lover, accusing her of every imaginable thing under the blue sky, although he does it quietly. Never stands up to do the right thing.

And Clarke can’t resent him for that, but she does wish there was a ring on her finger so she could know that he’s in this with her.

She wishes he was the man she had come to love, the man who would understand why she has to go back to her family home with a gun strapped to her thigh.

But in their eyes, she’s still a little monkey, dancing on that merry-go-round with unsteady foal legs.

She can’t close her eyes for the fear of falling.

“I had him shot because I could not understand. Your mother thought you’d come home. I hoped so, too. But I realized there was something more. Although, Clarke,” her grandfather smiles ruefully, “A woman as smart as you, choosing loyalty based on love?”

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“I didn’t think you would. So consider this a truce. Haven’t you wreaked enough havoc already, Clarke? Are you satisfied now?”

It was another good question. She would’ve been satisfied just to know they were safe. Free to live their lives together, whatever that meant now that everything had changed.

And she’s on the verge of saying that when Miller stands up abruptly, and Raven pulls her gun on Dante.

“He’s lying. The house is on fire.”

Clarke’s heart stops.

Bellamy on the second floor, unable to cross more than a few feet on his own.

Octavia and all the souvenirs of their family on the living room walls.

Jacob.

“ _Why?_ ”

Her grandfather just blinks at her. Then turns around to face Abby and Cage, both motionless.

“Which one?” No answer. Then, louder. “Which one of you did this?”

When no one pipes up, Dante gets up faster than a man of his age should be able to, slams his fist down on the coffee table.

The glasses fly across the room, smashing to pieces in the corners.

“I asked. Which. _One_.”

But Clarke’s too far gone, just hearing the whispers of Cage’s voice, and Abby’s excuses. She’s already in the hallway and then moving forward, stumbling in her heels as she dials Bellamy’s number.

Then Octavia’s.

Jacob’s.

None of them answer. She’s in the car, with Raven pushing 100 per hour on the calm streets.

Clarke only sees flashes of light.

Terror settles into her bones, as though something much bigger than her is telling her that this is how it was going to be from now on.

Houses burning, guns firing, and Clarke regretting it.

Because if Bellamy dies this time, the last thing she told him won’t be how much fun she’s having with him.

It’ll be a bitter, hissed, “ _Fuck you_.” 

“I’m going to kill them,” she says, two blocks away from the Blakes’ family home.

Clarke can already smell the smoke in the air, the warmth on the parts of her skin she used to press so lovingly to Bellamy.

“You and me both,” Miller tells her, loading his gun, just in case.

Clarke hears gunshots in the distance, and then - nothing.

The night turns into screaming, shouting, calls for buckets, calls for 911. The entire neighborhood is lit up by the pyre set under the Blakes’ family home.

On the lawn outside, Clarke sees silhouettes, and she hurtles herself out of the car, uncaring of the gun, uncaring of all the people who could be hiding another assassin with their bodies.

She sees her family.

Octavia, peering at her like some wild animal caught in a forest fire. Bellamy leaning on Lincoln, Octavia’s husband, and watching their house turn to cinders and ash. And Jacob - _Jacob_ , the sight of him relieves Clarke of guilt.

Some of them are looking at her.

Others, like Bellamy, remain motionless as they watch it all go down in flames.

“Bellamy,” she tries, pulling on his sleeve like a small animal begging to be loved. She’s not adequate here, she’ll never be adequate here. But she can’t walk away.

The fire is reflected burning red in his eyes and something in Clarke cracks.

“Bellamy, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

After what feels like hours, after the firefighters arrived to try and save something - _anything_ \- Bellamy looks at her.

Their eyes meet, just like they did in front of the gallery, when she thought he was a different man.

When he thought she was a different woman.

When she didn’t resent his judgement, and when he didn’t resent the violence her hands were capable of.

Bellamy looks at her and Clarke just wants to cry because for the first time in her life, there’s not a stranger behind the fury directed at her.

Just the man she loves.

And all he does is say, “You were right.”

She knows exactly what he means. They _were_ a mistake.

*

After the firefighters have done all they could and there are only charred remains of what used to be their family home (the same one Clarke knows Octavia first decorated with butterflies in her youth, and later with antique swords and family pictures), they all retreat to Bellamy’s downtown apartment.

Clarke brings blankets and pillows to Raven, camped out by the door. Jasper and Monty will be taking over the next shift.

On the couch, in front of the huge TV displaying a game show on mute, Octavia is passed out with her son in her arms. She has such a motherly grip on him, it might bruise.

Lincoln is sitting in the armchair across from them, eyes bloodshot and wide open, a shotgun in his lap.

Bellamy is in the kitchen.

Clarke watches him move around with the help of counters. Every shift causes a painful wince that makes her want to rush to him, and makes him shoot her a glare that says: stay away.

But he still makes them coffee.

They sit in the kitchen alone, Arkadia gleaming on the other side of the window. If she looked to the west, Clarke might still see the smoke.

But she keeps her eyes peeled to the center, where there’s still hope.

“The fire started in the kitchen,” Bellamy tells her, finally taking a seat by the counter. Across from her. Far removed. “Fox got Jacob out first. They came back for me last. I forgot my crutches.”

“Bellamy - “

He shakes his head, raises a hand. There’s still plaster in his hair. “I tried calling you, I thought you were hurt, too.”

“They kept us idling there.”

Bellamy nods, curt. For a moment, they just sit there in silence, drinking their coffee and looking at the marble countertop, not at one another.

“It’s not your fault,” he says at last, looking up to meet Clarke’s eyes. “I was the one hounding you. I told you it’d be alright. But I fucked up. I got careless. I fell in love.”

“And now?”

Bellamy shrugs, gives her a forlorn look. “What now? We have more money, thanks to you. We have less of everything else, thanks to me.”

“Don’t say that. We’re all okay. No one got hurt.”

“I know.” He sighs, runs a hand through his hair and looks up at her. He looks stronger than he did in the past few months, but there’s something missing from him. “But how long until someone does?”

“So what, that’s it?” Clarke shoots back, crossing her arms at her chest. She’s furious, and she’s mostly furious with the Wallaces. But she’s also furious with him. “What? _Thanks for a good time, Clarke,_ ” she mimics his voice cruelly, “ _Thanks for dancing for me. We’ll all go our separate ways now._ Is that it?”

Bellamy’s gaze turns sharper, his features locking up into something incomprehensible. It reminds her of their first dinner together. The accusations. The blind rage.

Maybe she misses it. Maybe she misses Bellamy giving a sign of life.

“You’re just giving up because it’s easy,” she tells him, finally. It drops like a stone between them and leaves cracks in its wake. “But you’re a coward. I’ve been running around, trying to fix what I’d broken, and all you have for me are insults. Accusations. You mind it when I go with Octavia, you mind it when I stay home with you.

“So what is it that you want me to do, Bellamy?

“Do you want me to be a perfect little woman, too? Because I’m not giving up on you. So how about you _man up_ and show me that you’re not giving up, either? How about _you_ show me family?”

It wasn’t a joke, toying with the skin where a ring should be.

She did it to rile her family up, but she also did it to explain to herself why there was always something Bellamy couldn’t say, and she felt like she deserved.

“I showed loyalty when I didn’t have to. I showed you how much I love you. But all I got from you in return was scorn.”

Clarke shakes her head, kicks her chair back and stands up. “Not even a stupid fucking dance monkey like me can take that endlessly.”

She’s about to leave when he grabs her wrist.

When he was shot, all she wanted to do was waste away with him, if he died.

If he died, she wanted to be in the cold, hard ground, looking from the inside out as the snow kept falling on their motionless bodies.

At least they’d be together.

Now, she looks at the place where their hands connect, the grip he has on her - physical, and in every other sense. She looks at him, the man she fell in love with, the coward who wouldn’t give her love because it was something strong.

Their love was so strong that it burst out of their kitchen windows, reeked in the street.

They’d be washing away the remnants of that love off her for years to come.

“Are you leaving?” he asks, sharp.

“I am.”

Bellamy nods. For a second, she thinks he’ll let her go. Then, he tightens his grip.

“Marry me.”

Like so many times before, Clarke’s heart sinks.

“Not like this, Bellamy. Not because you’re angry.”

“It’s not because I’m angry,” he starts, raising his voice, and then collects himself, takes a deep breath in and meets her eyes again. This time, he’s quieter. “You’re right. It’s an awfully bad time to be looking for the easy way out. We’ll - “ he frowns, and Clarke stops herself from smoothing out the lines between his eyebrows, “We’ll figure it out. We always do.

“If that’s what it takes, we’ll all live right here. We’ll sleep in the damn bathtubs for all I care. We’ve survived with less. And if you want to be by my side, doing that, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Do you _want_ me there?” Clarke counters, slipping out her hand from his grip. It’s not her fault.

It’s not her fucking fault, the blood in the snow and the burning house.

She did the best she could.

“I do.”

Clarke thinks about it, then nods. “I’ll need a ring. And a wedding date.”

Bellamy laughs, standing up with another wince, but he shakes it off as he wraps his arms around her waist.

“You got it. Whatever the hell you want, Princess. In return, I just want you to promise me one thing.”

“Oh?”

“We do this together. And you actually _listen_ to what I have to say.”

This time, Clarke is the one frowning, moving away so she can look at him straight. He’s resolute. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, no more fucking around. We do this the right way.”

*

She wakes up to bellowing in the morning.

It takes Clarke a while to come to and realize where she is. The pillows are soft, and morning light streams through her curls so brightly that she has to close her eyes.

The past day’s events come back to her slowly. Her dress is on the floor, two glasses of scotch by the bed. She moves to adjust herself and finds all her muscles sore; some from the sheer intensity of holding back her anger, others from the first night in three months that she and Bellamy actually had sex.

It took them a while to find their usual rhythm, working around his wounds and Clarke’s stiffness, but at the end of the day - or, at least, the break of dawn - they didn’t need much to get to know each other’s bodies again.

It was a second nature.

Clarke rolls her shoulders, and hears another shout. For a second, she panics, and then she realizes it’s Bellamy’s voice, commanding something with authority, but no real anger.

“ - Now!”

She grabs one of his shirts, barely holding on to it against her bare body, and pads into the hallway, only to be met with quite a sight.

Bellamy is leaning on the wall, orchestrating all his closest lieutenants in the middle of his living room.

“Miller, I want you downstairs. Anyone tries to come in, shoot them.” His voice is cold, his shoulders squared. He’s in his element. “Monty, monitor the cameras. And I mean _monitor_ them, don’t fuck around.”

Both Monty and Miller nod, retreating to their respective positions. Clarke hears the door slam on Miller’s way out and returns her attention to Bellamy. He’s magnetic like this, all the eyes in the room are on him.

His bathrobe slips off his shoulder, revealing freckled skin with red marks she’d left with her nails.

_‘I missed you,’ she said, letting him bury every inch of himself into her. When he did, she held on for dear life, finding that he’s ferocious for her still, his unrelenting pace punishing and adoring her in equal measure._

“Why are you standing there?" he snaps at Jasper, motioning towards the door. “Make sure our warehouses are safe. Raven, call Lightbourne and tell him the deal is still on. The Wallaces didn’t do _shit_ to stop us.”

And God, they didn’t stop him. If anything, Clarke could feel his rage last night.

_‘I’m sorry,’ he told her after, holding her like he used to. ‘I know you did so much for my - ‘ he frowned, and then, ‘_ our _family. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to support you.’_

“And O,” he finally turns to his sister, sitting on the armchair next to Lincoln. Clarke pads closer, adjusts his bathrobe, and smiles back when he looks back at her, surprised. Then, he keeps her hand on his shoulder, covering it with his own. “I promise you’ll be back in your house by July.”

Octavia raises an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re back?”

Bellamy looks at Clarke and she gives him the nod she’s wanted to give him for a very long time. This is them.

And _this_ is their family.

“I’m back.”

*

In the months which follow, Clarke gets to see a different side of Bellamy.

Even though he still needs a cane, at least he shows up for physical therapy regularly. He gets up at 5am, leaves her in their bed, and gets to work.

And if they never talked shop before he was shot, then it’s all they talk about now.

She gets to watch him cold and merciless, rolling up his sleeves, only to kiss her goodnight and tell her not to wait up. He cleans up their operation, but he cleans up their family, too.

He comes back with new wounds on his knuckles.

“Are you going to get hurt?” she asks him one night, draping a sheet over her body to join him in the living room. He’s got a haunted look in his eyes, a glass of scotch sitting on his knee as he observes their kingdom.

When he hears her, the cursed look is gone. There’s just adoration.

“Hey, baby,” he whispers sweetly, beckoning her over so she can take a seat in his lap, lean her head against his. “Are you worried about me?”

There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, so she just smacks his shoulder lightly, forces him to look her in the eye.

“I’m _always_ worried about you.”

“Then don’t be,” he calms her, snakes a hand around her waist and keeps her close enough for their noses to brush. Suddenly, she sees him for who he is to everyone but her.

Bellamy Blake, the head of the Blake family.

No one would dare touch him.

“I promised you we’d be okay. I intend to keep that promise, Princess.”

Clarke hums against his neck, finding the sweet spot of warmth in the crook of his shoulder. These days, she can’t get enough of him. It feels like she only just got him back.

“Hey,” she starts then, tracing her finger from his jaw up to his upper lip. There’s a smooth line of skin there, gone white over the years. The scar he’d begged her not to touch. “You never told me what this one was about.”

He’d told her about every other scar; from the one on his biceps, a knife that grazed him back when he was still fighting out in the streets, to the gunshot wound she’d recognize in her sleep.

But he never told her about this one.

Now, he takes her fingers in his, his rough skin against her soft, and he kisses every pad. Smiles.

“I was sixteen, and my mom thought Octavia and I would be better off if a man took over her little organization.” Clarke remembers _that_ history - starting out small, just because there was nothing else to do. Then growing. “She had a boyfriend then. He used to fight in the rings downtown. He was an asshole, but she figured even that was better than leaving us alone for days on end.”

He chuckles darkly, and averts his gaze towards Arkadia. Clarke weaves her fingers into his hair, gently scratches at his neck.

“As you can presume, it was not better.” Bellamy swallows, hard, and Clarke has half a mind to stop him, ask him to just tell her another time, but he keeps going. “We fought one night. He came after Octavia, thinking she stole a few bucks from him. Octavia would _never_ ,” he adds, solemn. “I always made sure she had everything she needed.”

He takes a deep breath, and Clarke steels herself.

“He swung for her, and I- fuck, Clarke, she used to be so _tiny._ We’re just five years apart, but she was just skin and bone. He hit her, broke her wrist.”

Bellamy slams his eyes shut, shifts his balance so he can press a hand against the smooth plane of his forehead. Clarke reaches out for his hand on instinct, and he throws her an unhappy look.

“I stepped in, and he hit me. Split my lip.” He gestures towards the scar she’d been asking about. “I killed him.”

Bellamy exhales into the cool night air, like something mighty heavy just rolled off his chest.

“I didn’t use a gun. Didn’t use a knife. I used my own damn hands, and I killed him.”

Clarke presses a kiss to his cheek. “You were just protecting her.”

“I’m not sorry. No one comes for my family.” Then he meets her eyes again, a deep understanding waking in his gaze. “I know why you did what you did, Clarke. I respect you for it. I’ve loved you even before that. But you should know that we are safe now.”

A beat, and then -

“I’ll make sure of it.”

*

All the Blakes do sleep in his apartment for a while.

Clarke and Octavia brush shoulders as they brush teeth over the only unoccupied sink in the place.

They watch the game together. Go grocery shopping together, heavily armed and with an entourage of five waiting outside Walmart.

“Cheerios or Lucky Charms?” Clarke asks, lifting both boxes to Jacob, as Octavia already rolls her eyes. “Both?”

“Both.”

The situation bears down on all of them, but at least Bellamy is finally showing signs of life.

He’s back, and they’re all safer for it.

By the time Clarke’s belly is swollen, Bellamy is better. They’re all better, Octavia’s family moving back into the restored house. While Bellamy and Clarke were making sure they made money from the Lightbourne deal she negotiated for them, Octavia oversaw the construction work.

The next July is warm, and they spend it on the lawn, pulling out deck chairs to watch the fireworks.

Bellamy holds Clarke in his lap, one hand laid protectively on her belly. She dozes off like that, uncaring of the explosions and wild cheers that erupt when Jacob launches his own rockets into the night sky.

“We’ll be okay,” Bellamy tells her and their daughter. It’s a daughter, Clarke knows. She kicks just like her mom. She’s as fast as her dad. “I promise.”

The next day, they visit the Wallaces’ mansion again.

Clarke’s mother cries when she sees her, and her hands first go flying towards her belly. Then, Abby stops herself, and hugs her daughter instead.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

This time around, there’s a ring around her finger.

Bellamy presented it with fanfare, as theatrical as he was, proposing to her right in the middle of the restored living room, with all the Blakes and friends around them.

“Thanks, mom.”

There’s a ceasefire, a truce, maybe.

Bellamy helps her to the living room, navigating her old family house with a certainty Clarke never had. She crosses the marble floor in the hallway, and she can see bloodstains, pausing slightly in her step.

Bellamy looks at her. “You okay?”

Clarke nods, holds on to him tighter. “I’ll be alright now.”

_Now that you’re here_ is missing from her sentence but Bellamy smiles like he knows, squeezes her hand.

They fought back at home, but there was no bite to their words this time around.

Oh, they tried, but Bellamy just softened at the sight of her, and Clarke couldn’t stop looking at the paintings. After all this time, she couldn’t stop looking at the damn paintings.

This time, Cage is missing from the Wallaces’ midst. Dante shakes Bellamy’s hand, pecks Clarke’s cheek.

“I guess congratulations are in order. You know how it goes, Blake. You break her heart, we - “

“Can we not do that anymore? Please?” Abby pipes in, weary.

“That’s a good idea, Abigail,” Bellamy agrees, helping Clarke sit down and placing his cane to the side as he takes a glass of scotch. He swirls the amber liquid around in the glass, the ice clinking against the sides. “We came here to tell you that we want to divide the ground evenly.”

“What do you have in mind?” Dante asks, cocking his head in honest curiosity.

Bellamy takes a long time to form the sentence, but then all eyes in the room are on him.

He might be walking slower, but his mind is still as sharp as a tack. Some nights, Clarke swears she can’t handle the heat of seeing him have such a firm grip on everything.

In a different world, their story would’ve looked differently.

But this is _her_ world and so she listens as he proposes the changes to the turf lines. Changes to the trade agreements. An even split between territories.

A peace.

“We could stop fighting, Dante,” he finally says. “We could _live_.”

And when her grandfather smiles, Clarke knows that the man she dreamed, hated, and then started loving, managed to do what none of them could.

Clarke lowers a hand to her belly, their daughter kicking inside like she knows exactly what her dad is saying and she’s going to voice her support even if it’s the last thing she ever does.

Even their daughter knows that Bellamy gave Clarke peace and together, they might manage to share it with the rest of Arkadia.

So tonight, Clarke dances one last time.

The next morning, she’s pretty sure, would rise bright and blue-sky easy.

And they’d both be there to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... and CUT! I hope you guys had fun! :) Please let me know what you thought in the comments and thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! :) I'd love to hear what you thought! Everyone loves something, and fic writers are hooked on kudos and comments. 
> 
> You can also come talk to me on Tumblr [@marauders-groupie.](https://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com)


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